1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display control apparatus and a control method thereof. More specifically, the present invention relates to a technique to be used in outputting audio data corresponding to a content displayed by the display control apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a multi-window system has been widely generally used because of widespread of personal computers (PC). The multi-window system is a system in which a plurality of virtual regions is defined on a display apparatus and different applications are allocated to each of the virtual regions.
An operator can use the plurality of applications at the same time while the operator is switching the virtual regions using an input device such as a mouse. According to improvement of technical advantages of operational equipment which processes applications, reproduction of moving image contents which requires more amount of operation can be realized by the multi-window system. By reproducing the moving image contents in the multi-window system, it becomes possible to reproduce and watch a plurality of moving image contents at the same time.
However, in the multi-window system, in a case where a plurality of pieces of data containing sound, i.e., the moving image contents, is reproduced at the same time, there is a problem that it is difficult for the operator to listen to each sound since a plurality of pieces of sound is synthesized to be output. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 06-110642 discusses the following technique as a sound synthesis technique of the multi-window system in order to resolve the above described problem. More specifically, a plurality of pieces of sound is synthesized after a sound volume of each of the plurality of pieces of sound is selected according to a distance between a pointer display position and a window. Accordingly, the sound volume of the sound of the desired application is turned up while the sound volumes of the remaining plurality of pieces of sound of the other applications is turned down.
Recently, display apparatuses represented by liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and plasma display panels (PDPs) have been more large-sized and highly defined. Further, because of a development of a graphics card which supports high resolution, more applications can be processed at the same time by using the above described multi-window system. As a result, a plurality of operators can share to use a large-sized display apparatus rather than an operator operates the large-sized display apparatus alone. For example, in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-305079 discusses a display apparatus in which the display apparatus having a table-like shape is horizontally disposed and a plurality of operators share to use the single display apparatus.
However, in a case where the plurality of operators share to use the display apparatus, there is a problem that a troublesome occurred in setting an output of the sound corresponding to the display data.
For example, in a case where each of the operators displayed a plurality of moving contents on the display apparatus, the operator is required to perform the sound volume setting and/or the stereo/monaural setting with respect to each of the moving contents. Further, in a case where operators work separately while sharing one display apparatus, the operators have to take care of the settings of the other operators.